The present invention resides in the field of musical instruments, particularly, a bass guitar in which the tones register lower than in an ordinary base guitar. Therefore, this invention should be considered as a contrabass guitar.
The classical contrabass guitar is tuned EADGBE, like the classical guitar but one octave lower. In this sense, it may actually be considered as an acoustic bass guitar, for it shares the same low-end range. Although called a contrabass guitar, the fact that it is tuned one octave lower than a normal guitar means that it is in actuality an acoustic bass guitar rather than a contrabass instrument. One ground on which it differs from an acoustic bass guitar is the thickness of the strings, which thickness is less than an acoustic bass guitar. Thus, it lacks the “thick” tone, which is a unique feature of bass guitars. Contrabass guitars from the 1970s are often tuned “B-E-A-D-G-C” (B=B0—the lowest B on the piano), and usually have a solid wooden body.
In a stringed instrument, such as a guitar or bass guitar, the strings are typically supported at the neck of the instrument and at the bridge, being free to vibrate along their length between these two points of support. Ideally, the supporting points are rigid so that they do not move, flex, or vibrate with the strings. Such movement would absorb energy from the string, dampening the sound. The ability of the string to vibrate without dampening is often referred to as a tone sustaining characteristic. Where the instrument utilizes a sound board, the bridge also has the function of transferring the vibrations of the string to the sound board with the minimum of distortion and loss. Both of these requirements are best satisfied by a substantially rigid bridge.
Countering these requirements is a desire for the position of the strings to be adjustable. Musicians have individual preferences for the height of the string above the finger board. The closer the string to the fingerboard, the less effort required in fingering the string. However, if the string is too close, it may buzz against the finger board. Individual height adjustment of the strings is a common approach to meeting the musician's needs.
Traditionally, the string support at the neck of the instrument is fixed, so the above adjustments must be accomplished at the bridge. A wide variety of bridges have been developed and are in use which provide both height and length adjustment for the individual strings. However, this adjustability comes at a cost. The bridge can no longer be a single, rigid piece. Multiple elements must be provided and interconnected to provide the two independent adjustments. Any element which is free to move, linearly or axially, or flex, and any connection which allows free play or introduces friction, results in a loss of energy and a dampening of the sound. Where sound transfer to the sound board is desired, these losses directly impact the quality and quantity of the sound transferred.
The contrabass is spring corded rather than corded with ordinary flat wound steel bass strings. The current bass guitars have strings under tensile stress whereby the pitch of the bass varies with the more tension applied to the strings. The relationship is directly proportional in that the higher the tension applied, the higher the pitch. The physical relationship of tension to pitch does not govern the musical function of the bass guitar. The tension on a tuned bass guitar does not change; the sole change is the length to pitch relationship. When a player's fingers depress the strings on the bass fret board, various notes on the octave scale create bass guitar music. Therefore, the directly physical relationship of length to pitch determines the musical function of the bass guitar.
The present invention for tuning a contrabass guitar employs a torsion to pitch relationship rather than the traditional tension to pitch or length to pitch relationship in the existing bass guitars. As the torsion is increased, the pitch of the guitar is also increased. Further, the present invention allows a player to adjust the torsion by the use of a foot pedal that connects to a floating bridge to adjust the pitch of the strings without having to manually adjust the torsion while playing the guitar and allows a player to raise or lower the pitch “hands-free” while playing the instrument.
According to one aspect of the invention, the floating bridge moves up and down the body of the contrabass guitar following the foot pedal depression. This movement causes tuning cylinders to move in a rotational motion sliding forward and back over helically twisted flat tuning control rods fixedly attached to the torsion block at the bottom of the guitar face. This movement creates greater and lesser torsion in the strings resulting in changes of pitch. The freedom of movement up and down the body by the floating bridge is made possible by a pair of wheels mounted to an axle supporting the floating bridge in a perpendicular orientation to the guitar body below.
The floating bridge movement is controlled by the depression and release of a foot pedal connected to the bridge by a cable. The cable is connected to a bar on the side of the bridge facing the cable connection in which the bar extends across the bridge to provide a uniformly equal force across the bridge to retain the bridge in a parallel relationship to the strings for equal torsion/pitch adjustment across all of the strings. The functional relationship of the floating bridge, the tuning control rods and cylinders, the string torsion, and the cable the reactionary force combine to provide the torsion means to vary the pitch of the strings of the musical instrument, in this case a contrabass guitar.
The advantages of such an apparatus are a stringed musical instrument which employs torsion to pitch relationship, rather than the traditional tension to pitch or length to pitch relationship in the existing bass guitars, allows a player to create a higher pitch than possible in the existing bass guitars. Moreover, the present contrabass guitar allows a player to adjust the tension by the use of a foot pedal that connects to the floating bridge moving the bridge and applying greater or lesser torsion force to the strings without having to manually adjust the string tension while playing the guitar. The above and other features and advantages of the present invention will become more clear from the detailed description of a specific illustrative embodiment thereof, presented below in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.